Technically Optimistic

Technically Optimistic

Data is the most valuable resource on our planet, and the data economy impacts everything from mental health to human rights. On Season 2 of Technically Optimistic, host Raffi Krikorian engages engineers, activists, professors, and more to ask big questions about our data-driven era. How and why is our data being collected? How is it affecting our daily lives, our decision-making, our political systems? Perhaps most importantly, what does the future of data look like, and what can we do to help shape it? This season of Technically Optimistic is all about your data, and how you can gain back some control.

Episodes

What's next for data

June 19, 2024 • 61 mins
The way we use and understand data is rapidly evolving. So what does the future hold? Will backlash against surveillance capitalism result in protections that empower people to take control of their data? What’s going on with the new American Privacy Rights Act that’s currently moving through Congress? Raffi talks to experts about how we can understand — and help shape — the future of data, exploring new policy, digging into the co...
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The India episode — tech and data in the Global South

June 12, 2024 • 64 mins
The data boom has had an outsized impact on India and the Global South. This episode explores how the data economy has changed life on the ground in South Asia — and for tech workers in the US. What does the future of caste look like for the South Asian diaspora, and in the tech world at large? What can be done to mitigate the harms of caste discrimination? How can tech help resource marginalized populations, enable social mobility...
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Who's watching the kids?

June 5, 2024 • 63 mins
Whether we like it or not, the kids are online — and they’re being tracked just like the rest of us. Who’s after their data, and why? We examine the harms minors face online — from how tech companies profit off addictive usership, to the consequences of social media on kids’ mental health and emotional development — and we explore some new proposals for how to protect their privacy. Are more parental controls the answer? Will newly...
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Policed by our data

May 22, 2024 • 62 mins
New technologies, such as facial recognition, are being used by law enforcement to identify, locate, and convict people. Powered by data gathered from across the internet, these imperfect programs can sometimes get it wrong, resulting in wrongful arrests. Are these surveillance systems making us safer, or just the opposite? How can we conceptualize the relationship between data and criminal justice? Does the Fourth Amendment protec...
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Digital surveillance and reproductive rights

May 15, 2024 • 56 mins
Digital surveillance is becoming increasingly threatening to the reproductive rights of women and pregnant people in America after the fall of Roe v. Wade. Behavioral data collected from apps can be used to catalog — and criminalize — our health care choices. In this “wild west” surveillance economy, who is responsible for safeguarding our privacy? Could more and more of our data be weaponized against us in this same way? How can t...
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Your data, your vote

May 8, 2024 • 60 mins
Modern political campaigning has become a massive data operation. In the US, candidates from both parties frequently use data to try and better understand voters, in hopes of swaying them on election day. But how, exactly, is voter information being acquired, analyzed, and employed to influence voters? Do modeling and targeting really move the needle? And how are political campaigns a microcosm of the data economy, illuminating how...
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How to save social media

May 1, 2024 • 60 mins
When social media is at its best, we get genuine human connection, built-in audiences, and exciting avenues for creativity and exchange. But our current social platforms are built on a surveillance model, where our data is used to predict our behavior, show us ads, and train the algorithms that keep us perpetually on the platform. It’s time to explore a new vision for social media, where we don’t have to give up on privacy in order...
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How your behavior became the world's biggest resource

April 24, 2024 • 50 mins
How has our data become the world’s most valuable resource? What privacy tradeoffs are we making when we engage with personalized apps, recommendations, and always-connected smart devices? Is our personal data being used to make things better, or to make tech giants even more powerful? And what do “cookies” have to do with all this?  Host Raffi Krikorian chats with experts about data’s role in AI, “big data” and the data economy, s...
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Season Two is all about your data

March 10, 2024 • 4 mins
The second season of Technically Optimistic is all about your data. Who’s taking it? What are they doing with it? And how can you gain back some control? Join host Raffi Krikorian, CTO of Emerson Collective, down this road. It’s going to lead to some predictable places — like AI and social media — but also to stories about health care, political campaigning, and criminal justice reform. Subscribe now! New episodes are coming soon. ...
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Unpacking Biden's AI plan

November 3, 2023 • 40 mins
On Monday, October 30th, Biden signed a landmark executive order on artificial intelligence safety and security. It was timed strategically, released the same week as VP Harris gave a speech at a UK AI summit. And, in the absence of any Congressional action, Biden’s document represents the most comprehensive and official policy of the United States on AI at the moment. So, what’s in the executive order? Host Raffi Krikorian speak...
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Justin Hendrix on AI policy and democracy

September 29, 2023 • 47 mins
As AI rapidly advances, how do we balance speed and safety? Justin Hendrix is the CEO and Editor of Tech Policy Press, a nonprofit media and community venture covering the intersection of technology and democracy. Through his reporting and research, he’s got a lot to say about the global developments in AI regulation, including the AI Act in the EU, emerging efforts in the US, and the implications for the future of US-China relatio...
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Timnit Gebru is asking different questions about AI

September 15, 2023 • 42 mins
Timnit Gebru is a co-author of one of the most influential research papers on AI from this decade, which coined the term “stochastic parrots” to describe large language models. Following her very public departure from Google in 2020, Gebru founded the Distributed AI Research (DAIR) Institute, an organization that describes itself as doing independent, community-rooted work, free from the pervasive influence of Big Tech. She’s now D...
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Kyunghyun Cho on language, culture, and AI

September 8, 2023 • 29 mins
In episode 6 of our first season on AI, we heard from Kyunghyun Cho, a professor of computer science and data science at New York University, about how artificial intelligence research in academia so often resembles corporate product development. But in his initial talk with host Raffi Krikorian, Kyunghyun had a lot of other interesting things to say — for instance, about how AI models affect marginalized languages, on whether ge...
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Ian Bremmer's plan for global AI governance

September 1, 2023 • 27 mins
Ian Bremmer is a political scientist, risk consultant, and the author of “The AI Power Paradox,” a new essay in the Sept./Oct. 2023 issue of Foreign Affairs, co-written along with Mustafa Suleyman (co-founder of DeepMind and Inflection AI). In this essay, Bremmer lays out a plan for AI governance that aims to take into account a fundamental shift in the nature of political power that he says has been brought about by AI. He imagine...
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Keolu Fox on the revolutionary power of Indigenous tech

August 25, 2023 • 34 mins
In August of 2023, wildfires on the Hawaiian island of Maui ripped through the historic town of Lahaina. Hundreds lost their lives, and thousands of structures were destroyed. The devastation is still unfolding. But this event was a tragic reminder that, for native Hawaiians, destruction of this magnitude did not just arrive out of the blue. These fires had a confluence of causes — like climate change, overtourism, and colonial mis...
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Bishop Paul Tighe on AI and our humanity

August 18, 2023 • 31 mins
Following our series on artificial intelligence, we are releasing a few bonus episodes. Hear extended interviews from voices we featured in the series, as well as new conversations with exciting guests you haven’t heard yet.  Up first: Bishop Paul Tighe is the Vatican’s Secretary for Culture and Education. His mandate is to engage with what humans are up to all over the world — and in this office he has developed an interest in A...
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AI and Accountability: Who is responsible for managing AI?

August 4, 2023 • 64 mins
In the final episode of our limited series on AI, we look at the big issues of accountability and responsibility. How should we allocate the responsibilities for managing this technology? Who will decide when AIs are doing more harm than good? Will we be looking to private companies or depending on public servants? And what will be left for individual citizens to decide? To help unlock solutions to the growing challenge of AI res...
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On Strike! How will AI impact the economy, culture, and the future of creativity?

July 28, 2023 • 61 mins
We often speak about the AI revolution as though it were something that might happen in the far future. But, what about today, when AI is modifying our culture, society, and the economy as we speak? In this episode, we consider how AI is currently creating massive shifts, and the potential benefits and challenges we face right now. Is AI revitalizing the economy, or is it on track to displace countless workers? Will AI render fil...
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Education and AI: What does AI have to teach us?

July 21, 2023 • 56 mins
Can we use AI as a tool that enriches learning, rather than replacing it? We're seeing AI rapidly revolutionize the classroom and it's poised to completely transform both education and learning itself. But, how can we also ensure that everyone has access to the basics of tech and AI literacy so that we can all, every one of us, reap the benefits of AI and understand its nuances? In this episode, we explore the potential of AI to ...
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Rules of the Road - part 2: What might regulating AI look like?

July 14, 2023 • 58 mins
The questions we face around who can govern AI are complex. If we want to reap the rewards of this technology, what – if any – regulatory solutions are needed to offer us the best outcomes? And who has the power to set these new rules in motion? In Part 2 of this two-part episode of Technically Optimistic, we talk with the diverse thinkers who are proposing ways forward for AI governance and explore whether these solutions allow ...
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